In their new book ‘Power Lines: The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition,’ Sanya Carley and David Konisky ask what happens to the people left behind in America’s energy transition.
“The literature to date, at least when we started this work, had an over-reliance on technological solutions and policy to achieve those technological solutions,” says Carley. “What was less common was an appreciation and recognition that technologies don’t exist in isolation of people, or vice versa.”
She adds, “the shifts that we are undergoing in the energy transition have very real and immediate impacts on people and communities: people losing their jobs, entire local economies going belly up, communities housing new energy infrastructure, workers facing dangerous working conditions, and people not being able to afford energy.”
“The adoption of new energy technologies and infrastructure is obviously central to the clean energy transition, and given the urgency of climate change, it is not wrong to focus on technological solutions,” says Konisky. “Yet, many people often assume that clean energy technologies mostly generate win-win solutions, which we argue in the book fails to recognize the social context for their adoption and use.”
Novel plant-based approach to a better, cheaper GLP-1 delivery system
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell investigates the use of a lettuce-based, plant-encapsulated delivery platform as a new oral delivery of two GLP-1 drugs previously approved by the FDA in injectable form.
No brain, no gain: Neuronal activity enhances benefits of exercise
Research led by Penn neuroscientist J. Nicholas Betley and collaborators finds that hypothalamic neurons are essential for translating physical exertion into endurance, potentially opening the door to exercise-mimicking therapies.
In honor of Valentine's Day, and as a way of fostering community in her Shakespeare in Love course, Becky Friedman took her students to the University Club for lunch one class period. They talked about the movie "Shakespeare in Love," as part of a broader conversation on how Shakespeare's works are adapted.
In Becky Friedman’s English course Shakespeare in Love, undergraduate students analyze language, genre, and adaptation in the Bard’s plays through the lens of love.
Beating the heat: Designing cooling for bodies in motion
Dorit Aviv, director of Weitzman’s Thermal Architecture Lab, studies how humans, technology, and design intersect, paving the way for the development of novel approaches to cooling people efficiently.
